


Decay

by alleged (alleged_grey_warden)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Decay, Gen, Happy Ending Not Promised, Harm to Anders, Horror, Rotting, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 03:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12645216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alleged_grey_warden/pseuds/alleged
Summary: Justice and Anders' merging goes wrong, and they end up swapping bodies instead. What happens next will warm your heart.





	Decay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [restfield](https://archiveofourown.org/users/restfield/gifts).



> The summary is glib, but this is a pretty dark story, and possibly not very heartwarming. Or well, I don't think it's too dark myself, but everyone has different standards. I just couldn't think of another summary, okay?
> 
> Don't read if that might be a problem for you. Also, the majority of upsetting things that happen in this happen to Anders, so if _that_ bugs you, then don't read. Incidentally, though, this isn't harm written out of hatred or moral judgment. 
> 
> Happy Halloween! ...belated Halloween, I guess.

He did not open his eyes, they were already wide open as the world around him began to filter in. Darkness. Brief flickerings of light crackling along the wall. Gray hazy shapes swimming in his sight. He tried to focus his gaze, to make sense of his surroundings. He could not. He tried to blink. He could not.

He felt himself lying on a stony ground. Something weighed upon him, pressing his limbs down. He struggled, and managed to stand.

His first step told him his knees weren’t working properly. They buckled with every step. He tried to turn his head, only for it to roll, his neck too weak to support it. His arms swung heavily in a panicked gesture. _Clink._ The sound of metal jostling against itself surrounded him. _Clink, clink._

He couldn’t breathe. He reached for his throat, flinging off the metal encasing that met his hands. He still could not breathe, but there was no tightness, no suffocation.

He did not need to breathe.

“This isn’t right,” hurried words coming from the corner. “This isn’t right, everything feels, everything is so loud, why is it loud…?”

A deep voice, childlike in its panicky repetition. Not his own voice, which remained stuck in his throat as he attempted to call out in response. All he could manage was a deathly rattle.

“Anders,” the voice was crying, almost too fast to understand. “Anders, where is Anders--?”

Him. _He_ was Anders.

The events came back to him in images. The Warden Commander handing him over to Rylock. The skirmish when Justice stepped in to stop it. The harried escape. The somber discussion they had as Anders healed up Justice’s wounds as best he could, and realized Kristoff’s body wouldn’t hold out much longer. The limbs of Kristoff’s corpse twitching as Justice’s light flickered out. A painfully intense surge of magic seeping into his skin, his bones, his very self. Suddenly regretting his choice, clawing away with all his will, going _No, no, let me get away._

And then, this.

He became aware of his skin. It was numb around him, hanging from his bones. He reached his hands slowly to his face, and touched. He felt flesh hanging off his bones, skin peeling away to let him touch rotting muscle and bone.

This time, he managed to force a cry from his throat.

Anders lurched forward, his knees buckling beneath him again. He couldn’t control his movements. Not like he was used to. He tried to direct them, but they moved like he only held onto them by the thinnest puppet strings.

He collapsed to his knees, only barely managing to stay up. It was dark, too dark and everything was still a haze of gray shapes.

He finally caught sight of something. Light. A crouched, robed figure clawing at itself. Sweaty hair plastered around a pale neck. A familiar set of hands. An unfamiliar energy crackling through their veins.

Anders finally managed to rasp something out. “Justice…?”

The figure’s head snapped back, twisting at an unnatural angle. Cracking. The face that met him was a horror, skin clammy, veins bulging, eyes burning with inhuman energy. Yet he knew that voice, and that face.

“Anders? Anders, is that you?”

His own face.

 

* * *

 

There was shouting, screaming, clawing desperately in an enraged panic--but there wasn't enough time to continue before they had to move.

They couldn’t stay in the cave, not even for the night. Rylock was still out there, and she still had his phylactery. Survival meant pulling together even when both of them wanted to scream and cry their way into nonexistence.

Each step was a trial, especially through the terrain they were moving through. Anders almost fell every few steps, only held up by Justice’s hypervigilant attempts to catch him each time.

Justice was not in a rotting body, not anymore. Anders was the one rotting away in Kristoff’s body now. Still, Anders felt something inside himself recoil in disgust every time Justice touched him.

“You do not move Kristoff’s body as I did,” Justice observed.

Anders felt a jolt of anger. It made Kristoff’s body shudder. “I’m only mortal, Justice. I shouldn’t be able to possess a body at all!”

“You have magic,” Justice insisted. “Please, try to summon your will. We must hurry.”

“Then stop talking and focus on moving forward,” Anders snapped. “I don’t want to hear it.

Justice was right, though. He could not move this shell around as easily as Justice had. After an hour of near collapses, he had to remove the armor, stripping down just to his tunic and boots. Even then, he could feel more of him wearing away with each step.

They tried to keep on the move, but Anders’ knees kept buckling beneath him, forcing them to stop every thirty minutes. Eventually, they stopped to rest. Anders found out he could no longer sleep. He stayed awake, shifting restlessly as he watched Justice doze off.

Justice woke with a start, eyes flashing.

“They are close,” he said.

There wasn't enough time to run, or throw the Templars off their trail. Anders tried, jerking his head to find the best escape, or a place to hide, or just a way to throw off their trail. Even as he looked, Rylock and the others emerged.

She looked directly at him for a moment, and then back to what she must have thought was him. Her lips curled in disgust.

“Murder, blood magic, summoning demons, raising the dead…” she rattled off the offenses. “I was going to bring you back to Kinloch for judgment, but I don’t see the point in that anymore. There’s no trial needed for abominations, after all.”

Justice bared his teeth, skin crackling and eyes blazing. “Try and kill us. You will regret it.”

“Men,” Rylock said dispassionately. “Attack.”

Anders lifted his heavy hand, willing a fireball to manifest. Nothing came.

The fight was an absolute farce. Justice swung his staff as though it were a sword, flinging fireballs in all the wrong directions, not a one managing to hit a Templar. Then, he set himself on fire.

Anders swung Kristoff's sword at Rylock. Compared to their last encounter, she was lightning fast. He could barely track her as she dodged. He flailed, jerking to swing at her again. Something flashed at his arm, and his vision exploded.

He didn’t feel the sword slicing through his arm. He barely understood, through the whiteness that enveloped his vision. He twitched more, struggling to lash out his sword again, struggling to do anything, only for it to be answered with nothing.

The next hit was in his chest. He was aware of it parting his organs. Ripping. Tearing. Cracking his spine. Yet painless, as though it were only pushing him away, pushing him into the air and slowly dispersing him into tiny particles.

He did not dissipate. He came back to find himself on the floor, a sword lodged in him. The terrain had been torn up and set aflame behind them, and there were Templars screaming and hissing in white-hot armor. A pair of arms held him, veins bulging and twisted.

He tried to move. He couldn’t. Instead, someone was lifting him up.

“Wh--” his throat was thick, and it was harder than ever to form words. “Where--”

“You are still here.” Justice’s voice had gotten extra layers.

“Wh--”

Before he could respond, he found himself dragged in the dirt for a moment, and then carried.

 

* * *

 

“Put your hand atop the wound,” Anders said. “Picture it sealing up. Channel the magic in your body. Just like how I used to heal you.”

Justice did as told, putting a hand over the gaping wound where Rylock’s sword used to be. Anders watched that hand stretch out. Already the skin was turning an unnatural hue, and its fingers stretching just slightly longer than Anders knew his hands were supposed to.

(Demons and spirits were used to being able to shift forms in the Fade, an enchanter had told him once. When in the body of a mortal, they often twisted and deformed it, unable to understand what they were doing.)

“Well hurry up,” Anders snapped.

Justice trembled. “I cannot. I do not understand.”

Anders managed to grind his teeth. “Don’t you have my memories, like you had Kristoff’s? Can’t you figure it out from those?”

He could see light cracking from Justice’s hands, could feel an energy surging through them. But none of it worked to close up the wound. Justice started to tremble.

“I can’t walk anymore,” Anders said. “I can’t move my own--can’t move these fingers! Fix it, fix it!”

“We will,” Justice said. “I swear it.”

“Then fix it now!”

Justice did not fix it. After holding himself so tense, energy crackling through him, he tapped into Anders’ magic, yes, but only to cause fire to erupt around his hands. His hissed, drawing them into his stomach and bending over to try and force the fire out.

“Damn you!” Anders said. “You have magic. You’re _made_ of magic and you can’t do this one thing?!”

Justice was shaking as he got the flame to die down. He didn’t seem to hear what Anders was saying, but focused on the burns all over his arms. “Everything hurts in this body.”

“Well _good,”_ Anders snapped. “I’m glad it hurts you! You’ve taken everything from me, my magic, my body, my memories, you should have to suffer for it!”

Now Justice snapped his head up. “No,” he said, as quiet as he ever was.

“I bet you planned this,” Anders said. “Trick the mage into letting you possess him. Pretend to be his friend. Pretend to help out so he’ll feel he owes you something. Right?”

“I would not!”

“You’re lying! Demons always lie!” He shrieked, and then his voice dropped. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

It wasn’t true. He knew it wasn’t true even as he said it. But he was so, so angry. Justice stared at him for a moment before convulsing intensely, shaking his head back and forth. Then, shaky and silent, he backed away to the entrance of the cave.

“Don’t leave,” Anders said, realizing what was happening. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me here!”

Justice left.

Anders screamed. He would have thrashed on the ground with all the dignity of a child throwing a tantrum, but all he could do was jerk his head and make his fingers twitch. He banged his head against the ground, screaming all he could, feeling all the organs that were ready to spill out, feeling where skin was rotting off, feeling all the ligaments that were ready to give way any day now and leave a pile of bones.

He screamed, and it no longer came from the throat he’d been using, or the decaying set of lungs. He didn’t have to run out of air, so he kept screaming still, pouring himself into the scream until his surroundings melted away around him. He finally let it die away, his entire being feeling spent from the effort that had taken.

He still lay on the ground. Insects--worms and ants were beginning to crawl into his open wound. He managed a full body shudder as he tried to squirm away from them, but could manage no more.

“Justice?” He called, frightened and weary. “Justice? Please…”

He was alone. Alone and rotting in a dark cave, ants crawling all over him, and he couldn’t even cry.

He couldn’t tell how long he was lying there before he heard footsteps at the mouth of the cave.

“Bugs,” Anders pleaded, hoping it was Justice. “Get them off me. Please.”

Silently, a pair of hands lifted him, brushing off and swatting away as many as they could and gently picking the rest off. That same pair of veiny, burned hands. Justice.

“You just left me like that,” Anders whined. “I thought you were gone forever. I thought you'd just dropped me here to rot… Maker…”

“I had no plans to abandon you,” Justice said. “I needed to… to breathe.”

“You could have said that.”

“Your words frightened me,” Justice said. “I did not think.”

“Well that’s pretty clear.”

“I am sorry.”

“You should be,” Anders hissed.

Justice didn’t respond. A way of remorse flooded Anders’ being. He knew how to be cutting, to be cruel, but he wasn’t used to someone responding to his remarks with silence. He twitched his fingers and turned his wobbly neck to look into Justice’s eyes.

There was no light in them, now. They were regular brown mortal eyes, for all Justice had already warped his face. And there were tears at the edges. Justice rubbed them away, as though he wasn’t certain what they were. Crying was an alien experience to him.

Anders crawled his fingers over to grasp Justice gently by the hand.

“Please don’t leave me again.”

 

* * *

 

That was the first time Justice left. Not the last.

There were still Templars out there that hadn’t been killed in that disaster of a battle, ones that were still looking for them. They had to stay on the move, Justice carrying him since Rylock’s blow had left him unable to move.

The next time Justice left was preceded by him curling over and clutching his stomach.

“I am hungry,” he said, voice wavering. His tone reminded Anders of a child who’d never experienced hunger or pain, and didn’t know what to make of it.

“Find something to eat. I’m sure you could manage to kill a rabbit and cook it.”

But hunting meant not carrying around a barely responding corpse, so Anders was left again, laid on a patch of moss, wrapped up as tightly as Justice could so the worms wouldn’t get to him--or wouldn’t get to him as fast.

“I will return,” Justice said, before asking anxiously. “Are you sure this will be alright?”

“Just go. Hurry it up.”

He was laying there for hours before Justice returned, mind going wild with the silence and everything that might go wrong. But Justice did return.

He started to leave regularly after that to get food. Some things just couldn’t be done with Anders, as much as it maddened him to be left alone for even a momen. Every time though, Justice asked him if he was alright, and promised to return. It counted for something, he supposed.

The waits got longer and longer. Anders started to think of how tempting it would be to leave him.

It was after a week that they heard a familiar sound: armored boots trampling through the grass, and then a voice.

“Halt, apostate!”

Justice only froze a moment before bolting. Anders could practically feel him sizzling with rage, even with his deadened nerves. But Justice couldn’t control fireballs, and he couldn’t swing a sword or staff when his arms with full, so they ran.

They managed to hide in another cave, listening to the armored boots outside, waiting for them to go away. He could see Justice’s eyes blazing, gnashing his teeth.

“Don’t you dare go out there,” Anders said.

“They will continue to hunt us,” Justice snarled. Anders saw a glimpse of sharp teeth. “We will know no peace or rest until they are all dead.”

“You can’t win,” Anders said.

“If we stay here,” Justice said, voice crackling with energy. “They will find us anyway.”

He was already, reaching for his staff.

“You stupid spirit,” Anders said hysterically. “They’ll kill you. They’ll definitely kill you.”

Justice was already headed towards the mouth of the cave.

“Don’t leave me!” Anders shouted. “You promised you wouldn’t!”

“I will return.”

Anders couldn’t even bang his head against the ground in a rage this time, the muscle in his neck had deteriorated so much. He could only listen to sounds outside the cave that he couldn’t quite make out. Clanking of armor. Flame. Swords clashing. A roar. The sickening sound of sword meeting flesh, and then silence.

Justice did not return this time.

 

* * *

 

He could not close his eyes.

Instead he stayed in his rotting shell, head perpetually turned towards the dark ceiling of the cave he’d been left in. There was no way to tell the time, no significant changes in that ceiling as hours flew by. There was not enough light for him to tell the coming and going of day.

The only changes he was aware of were those of his, _his_ body.

Flies swarmed him and laid their eggs in his flesh. Beetles crept into his gut and feasted. Maggots crawled through his skin, eating him away. Worms wriggled into his eyes. He could not even grieve the loss of his friends in the Wardens, or the loss of Justice. He could not reflect, because every moment of his thoughts was consumed with being devoured, decaying.

Sometimes he screamed, the last thing he could do after losing control of his bodily functions. Eventually he stopped that too.

He thought he would die, once there was little enough of him left. He wished he would die. But he stayed.

Trapped in the dark. Unable to move. Alone.

After some time, there were no maggots or worms, only his thoughts. Eventually came the images, the hallucinations, the sudden moments of panic. He did not go into the Fade, did not dream anymore in this state, and yet sometimes he could hear the Revered Mother that spoke to them at Kinloch droning away the chant, or the sound of Templar boots against the ground, or the sound of screaming beneath the ground.

Sometimes, he could swear he saw flashes of blue, and a voice.

_“You must stand up.”_

“I can’t.”

_“You can. You refuse not to out of sloth. Out of weakness.”_

“I’m not like you! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

Silence. Followed again by the flashes and recriminations. Sometimes, he even thought it was actually Justice talking to him. Most of the time, he was lucid enough to realize it was only as real as the droning of the Chant that tormented him. It wasn’t Justice. Justice was gone for good, hopefully sent back to the Fade when the Templars cut down Anders’ body.

More time passed. He no longer felt any rotting flesh, or even anything cleaning away his bones. He no longer had eyes.

_“You must stand and move forward, Anders.”_

“I can’t, I can’t…”

_“Why did you not come to aid me? I carried you and you spat in my face, I saved you and yet you let me go to my death.”_

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stop it…”

Grief. Anger. Guilt. Fear. It bled from him, seeping into the environment around him. Something had built up in him all this time, while maggots were turning into flies and the worms were cleaning off his bones. It continued to build as he replayed memory after memory, grieving, regretting. The whispers became louder. The images were clearer, as though the Fade had started to bleed more into the cave.

Something changed in him, in the self that was Anders but was not a tall, blond human man, nor a corpse. Something--but he could not tell what.

_“Will you wallow here forever? Please. Stand up.”_

“I can’t… I’ve told you.”

_“You have not tried.”_

“I’m only mortal. I’m just a regular, limited human person.”

_“You are not human. You are not a mortal.”_

He did not answer, but cried out. His voice--the voice that did not come from Kristoff’s throat or lungs. The voice that came from him. “What am I, then?”

_“You are a mage.”_

And what was a mage?

_“Reach out with your will.”_

“What if nothing happens? What if I really can’t?”

But he didn’t listen for an answer. He knew what Justice, the real Justice, would have said. Keep trying. Keep trying until your very existence has been stamped out. Even if you could not succeed, there was virtue in continually throwing yourself up against the world until something broke.

He reached out.

“It’s not enough. I still can’t,” he said. But his voice echoed and shook the cavern, magic seeping through the ripples.

_“You can. There is still magic in you--you must call for it not as a mortal does, but as….”_

Something _had_ changed.

“The Wardens sold me out. The Templars would put me to the death. Who would I go to? There is no one left.”

_“There is myself.”_

“No there isn’t. They cut you down. I know they cut you down. You’re not even here right now.”

Everything blurred. Because no, Justice wasn’t there. This wasn’t the Fade, and Anders couldn’t dream anymore. And Justice was probably destroyed, dead as any spirit could be. But somehow, stubbornly, the idea took hold. If spirits were immortal, if they were sent back to the Fade in some shape or form when defeated, then there was a chance--

“What is there out there, for me?” he asked.

But he already knew the answer. Freedom. The ability to choose, and to act. A chance. Hope. Out there, there was always hope.

He saw blue, and a flash of an outstretched armored hand. It instantly vanished into the darkness, leaving only an echo.

_“Come find me.”_

Anders stood up, and left the cave.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [ allegedgreywarden.tumblr.com](allegedgreywarden.tumblr.com)
> 
> Come talk to me. I'm bored.


End file.
